ABSTRACT
The influence of the presence of others on behavior has generally been treated as part of the broader phenomenon of social facilitation and inhibition of performance. The earliest study of social facilitation showed that performance on a motor task is enhanced by the presence of others doing the same task (Triplett, 1898). The major proportion of studies on social facilitation in the decade following Triplett's report involved a coaction paradigm similar to his. Eventually, however, the study of coaction faded to a secondary position and was supplanted by interest in the influence of passive audiences, an interest motivated to a large degree by the obvious implications of this approach for the practical problem of stage fright (Dashiell, 1935). This relative emphasis on the study of audience influence has been accompanied by the elaboration of intervening variables to explain audience effects, and much of this review is devoted to a discussion of those variables. Although in some cases the theoretical explanations that have been offered for audience influence may explain coaction effects equally well, the development of theory has been carried out primarily within the study of the former and not the latter. In this review, the primary emphasis is on studies of the effects of audiences on performance. Coaction effects are discussed where appropriate.
